


the dead and the divine

by millimallow



Series: the world of owa [18]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Gen, Siblings, depictions of hanging, sorcery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 18:39:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17965934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millimallow/pseuds/millimallow
Summary: string me up. i’ll come back to haunt you.another story from the world of owa anthology, this time set in the barren and hostile broken eye bayland.





	the dead and the divine

_i have fire carved into my bones._  
magic, summoned by a symbol  
and the watchful eye of albatross  
makes for a spell of protection.   
watch  
we draw the runes over and over again  
destroying them thereafter  
powdered bones climb into the air.   
and i wait  
and i watch  
for the tide to extinguish the flames.  
my circle etched under your body  
your body in the boughs of a threadbare birch  
(i can see you lurch  
in the wind)   
where i’m waiting.   
one eye open to the sweetness of sky  
to the echoing wilderness  
only hoping  
to hear your voice again.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i’ll deny what i did every time. you ask me if i see the same things you do; i reply the same.

“no.”

it’s a natural wonder that you’re not sick of asking it, then. it doesn’t need to be talked about, is the line i maintain, never to be crossed. this makes things easier- when you’re not inquiring about it, we can live in the present and not the past. here, where the sun is high and warm so often that it can barely convince me we still live on the same planet. frost only sets in during the deep window, snow falls next to never.

i knew that there was not long between the stasis of your body and the impending snowfall. late october was too far into the snow season for reservations, though still early. my story is that i was watching out of the window for the advent of snow, instead of staring at your body, swaying in the cold wind. don’t know why i had to look at it- i watched you hang, there was no further confirmation needed. when the last breath left your body ehiron turned to me, put his hand on my shoulder and said with a deep reverence-

“your sister has received the punishment she deserves. may zhatil forgive her for this in the aftershore.”

it was then expected of me to go home and partake in the preparations for dinner. any youngest sibling privileges had been removed, of course, by your death. not to mention the extensive shunning our family had been given, even after the fact. there was nobody around to help, even if we paid them. so it fell to me to scrub the potatoes clean in the water- only then could they be salted extensively and boiled in rising waters. we had distilled the salt from the ocean, of course- what kind of bayland would we be otherwise- and looking at it gave me an idea. i was familiar with spellbooks that had detailed various ingredients that we should be on the lookout for. in case we knew someone who hoarded them, or coveted them. taking the salt in my hand, one spell came back to me.

the spell of resurrection.

rune-carved bones of a slaughtered animal. seawater and distilled sea-salt from the same source. placed into a wooden bowl under a body, vertical, set alight.

well, i wasn’t an idiot. i had a bowl, and i had the salt. we lived next to the sea- in my right hand was a knife. in front of me was a broad cattle rib, salted to provide food throughout the winter, bone extracted. our parents retreated into their room, perhaps mourning. perhaps trying to replace you with a child that didn’t inherit our cursed and aching blood. the blood on my hands shook me to the core, my mind ringing, so i took the necessary materials and ran into the night.

to where your body was hanging, and where the wind blew it around.

family dinner is inevitably ruined when your child overboils the potatoes, so having one of them executed ritually and the other escape with your only boat could only make it worse. for half an hour after i cast the spell i had no idea whether it had worked properly or not. your eyes were twitching again, and you occasionally drew in a ragged and wheezing breath, but this could easily be an equally deceased corpse behaving oddly. it was not like me, on the infantile edge of 14, knew much about the human body post-mortem. that, and i had nearly set you on fire. my ritual flame had obliterated your clothes- or at least most of them- so you wore the great white nightgown i had used to shield myself from the outdoor temperatures.

my plan, which i had long formulated as the most efficient method of escape should my own secret be discovered, was to head in a downwards diagonal towards soretta samke, which was in the south and mostly welcoming. more than the broken eye bayland, it was the sort of place where nobody particularly wanted anything to do with your business if they could help it. so at the very least, i could bury you there, and make my way down to trevailia as a dockhand. aside from knitting, sailing was and remains one of my only talents. at that point i was glad that i had learned how to navigate with the moon and stars.

you came back alive close to the coast of soretta samke. during a patch of waves and wind i had tried my best to keep hold of your body, still broadly flaccid, as my small vessel was tossed and turned around by the winter weather. so close to relative safety, my hope was almost gone.

all until your eyes snapped open, frozen in fear, rigid as if you had experienced a bout of sleep paralysis. pupils dilated in a frightening and irregular manner, breaths panicked and quick. and as it happened, the sea seemed to quiet down. one second i was barely clutching you away from the waves, the next second there was heat beneath your cheeks and the silence seemed to stretch for miles.

we washed up on shore soon after. maybe an hour later, you were lucid again. i don’t think i’ve told you this story before, and it will be hard to say it again. these things are never perfect between us, but if you ever need me once more, i’ll hold you away from the waves again.

 


End file.
